Kevin retreated to the kitchen. When he was a child, in times of crisis, his mother had always brewed a pot of tea. When his father died, when the call came, she went calmly to the sink and filled a kettle, placed it on the stove and sat in a kitchen chair. Kevin had inherited the habit, along with her Brown Bettys and her collection of tea cozies (quilted from the shoulder pads of her vintage dresses). He did the same now. He set a large copper kettle on a ring of blue flame and turned to the table in the center of the room.

The salmon lay spread out on parchment paper in a baking dish. He’d left the fillets there only minutes before—though it seemed like hours now. Numb, slightly queasy, he rinsed the dill in the sink, chopped it, squeezed five limes in a glass bowl, threw in salt, brown sugar, peppercorns. He spooned the marinade over the fillets, smothered them with dill, then laid one fillet on top of the other, like a sandwich. His hands were trembling the whole time.

Douglas burst through the swing door.

Where the fuck have you been?

Here, Kevin said weakly. Where else?

What the hell are you doing?

Kevin laid parchment paper over the entire salmon.

Finishing the gravlax.

Now? Douglas stared at him incredulously. I’m going to Government Dock. They’re calling for help. Do you want to come?

Is everyone all right in the cottages?

The retiree wants to come with me. He keeps asking what he can do.

Kevin shrugged. What could any of them do? If they had a boat, it would be one thing. And even then, who knew?

I’ll stay, Kevin said. He was slightly annoyed; he’d completely forgotten the juniper berries. He felt as if he might be sick.

Douglas waited; he was about to say something else.

Go! Kevin shouted and flung a hand in the air.

The swing door paddled shut. Kevin squatted to the floor, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. The image of what he’d seen he couldn’t erase from his head. Nor the horrendous crunching sound, a sound he’d never heard before but knew precisely what it was.

He sat on his heels, two arms bracing the table, and exhaled; then he pulled himself up, ripped a long sheet of plastic wrap from the roll, and covered the salmon. The fillets would stew for three days in the gentle acid of the lime juice, the flesh slowly acquiring a lighter, pickled tone. The Swedish used to bury theirs underground and dig them from the snow when winter came. Kevin carried his gravlax to the walk-in and maneuvered it onto a back shelf.